


for the living and alive

by MashpotatoeQueen5



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Aang & Suki Friendship, Aang (Avatar) Needs a Hug, Aang (Avatar)-centric, Air Nomad Genocide (Avatar), Airbending & Airbenders, Angst, Angst and Feels, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Angst with a Happy Ending, Badass Suki (Avatar), Because we don't get to see enough of it in the show, Crying, Dancing, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Families of Choice, Festivals, Fluff and Angst, Found Family, Gen, Gentleness, Grief/Mourning, Growth, Healing, Hugs, Hurt/Comfort, I have a lot of emotions about these kids after the war, Male-Female Friendship, Men Crying, Music, Panic Attacks, Party, Personal Growth, Platonic Female/Male Relationships, Post-100 Year War (Avatar TV), Post-Avatar: The Last Airbender, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Precious Aang (Avatar), Suki is a Queen Among Women and i love her so damn much, Suki's been through A LOT, Suki-centric, Team as Family, Teenagers Dealing With Shit, The rest of the Gang is here too - Freeform, Trauma, and i shall not part with it, and we don't talk about it enough, because she deserves it, cause found family is top tier, trying to grow past it and find healing and live life
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-11
Updated: 2020-10-11
Packaged: 2021-03-07 17:22:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,048
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26951338
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MashpotatoeQueen5/pseuds/MashpotatoeQueen5
Summary: Bumi is one hundred and twelve years old and still around and kicking. Kyoshi grew up to be two hundred and thirty.It's perfectly reasonable to assume long life is a trait exhibited by more than just those who are good.“Why the fuck did no one tell me we were having a cuddle pile?”Katara answers before Suki has the chance.“It wasn’t exactly planned, Toph.”Or: Aang meets one of the firebenders who took part in the original Air Nomad genocide, and Suki deals with the aftermath.
Relationships: Aang & Suki (Avatar), Aang & Toph Beifong & Katara & Sokka & Suki & Zuko, Suki & The Gaang (Avatar)
Comments: 58
Kudos: 340





	for the living and alive

**Author's Note:**

> Wanted to try my hand at writing some more in depth Suki. Not sure if I completely captured her voice, yet, but we're definitely getting somewhere.
> 
> <**Please read the tags, friends! Some potentially triggering concepts are explored in this fic.**>

It’s a party of some sort. Big ol’ gala open to the public and all the different nations, the sort of festival you hold when trying to promote the idea that everyone’s at peace right now and everything’s just dandy.  _ Look, the war is over, we can be friends again! _

The event’s okay, as events go. There’s some live music being performed around the wide, open space, and ridiculously long tables absolutely  _ loaded  _ with food. People are mingling, cautiously, tentatively, and it’s awkward as anything but she supposes it’s better than nothing.

Suki doesn’t really know. She’s not there to have a good time, anyways. Officially, she’s here to be Avatar’s bodyguard, which… yeah. It’s not the most well thought out plan in the world. If things go to shit, Suki knows she can handle herself, but chances are Aang,  _ the fully realized Avatar,  _ will also be able to handle himself. 

With that in mind,  _ unofficially,  _ she’s here to hang out with Aang and keep him sane through the many,  _ many,  _ boring political discussions people keep trying to bring up. 

Technically, they could have put the crown guard up to the task, but as is they’re all still a little twitchy around them, not entirely sure where everyone’s loyalty lies. It was ultimately turned down.

So Suki is playing bodyguard and hanging out with her younger friend for the evening.

She scans the crowds. Across the way, Toph elbows Zuko and cackles like a gremlin. Zuko, for his part, seems quietly amused, rolling his eyes and shifting with the force of the movement, his long robes flowing. The delegates who were trying to talk with him look on with wide eyes.

Good. Toph is also managing the so called “bodyguard” position to her usual brand of excellence.

Katara catches her eye across the way and waves, smiling. Then she returns to talking with a middle-aged woman from the Northern Water Tribe, who Suki figures- based on the guest list- must be Ahnkah, the first woman to be instituted into the tribe’s ruling council. She knows that the other girl has worked really hard for these changes, endless diplomatic missions up North, and feels proud.

Her eyes trace the people moving all around them, laughing, eating, talking, dancing. Finally, they fall on Sokka, at the far end of the party. He’s got that face of his that means he’s in the midst of figuring out new inventions, all wide eyes and scrunched brows. The woman next to him seems to be speaking faster than an eel hound could run, words streaming out of her mouth and gestures huge. Her boyfriend hardly waits a beat after she’s finished to pick up the chatter, reaching into his bag to pull out a charcoal stick, grabbing at a napkin and leaning down to start sketching.

How does he find these people? They seem to pop up like daisies wherever they go, young inventors with brilliant minds catching onto the flair of Sokka’s own brilliance and drawn closer like lunar moths to a flame.

It’s absolutely ridiculous. She’s so happy for him.

“Suki!”

Suki turns, focusing her attention back on Aang, who grins up at her with his classic, blinding grin. He looks happy, surrounded by music and food and people. He looks young.

She smiles back and feels stupidly fond. If, a year ago, someone would have told her she’d adopt the  _ Avatar _ as a sort-of, kind-of kid brother, she would have laughed in their face.

Funny, how things change.

“Yeah, Aang?”

“Wanna dance?”

She turns the question over in her mind, hesitates.

Dancing has never been her thing. She grew up surrounded by katas and warriors training, illness and fear and tears. Kyoshi Island was a crumbling town at the edge of the world and none of it was fair, and even when she was a child she had tasted responsibility on her tongue.

But he’s already moving with the music, feet shifting to and fro. This kid is grinning up at her looking so  _ hopeful,  _ and Suki won’t deny Aang what semblances of childhood he can find, even if it means awkward shuffling on the dance floor.

So she says yes, and Aang beams brighter than the sun, and they join the mess of cultures and bodies spinning across the floor. At first, Suki stays majorly still, trying to at least give the air that she's here as a bodyguard. But in mere minutes she finds herself indulging Aang when he takes her hand and spins her, or wants to be spun in turn. 

Dancing, it turns out, can be incredibly fun when you're doing it with someone who really knows what they're doing. And Aang  _ definitely _ knows what he's doing.

So they dance. A lot. The music picks up and so does their speed. Suki is a warrior, she knows how to stay light on her feet, the necessity of balance and the power of being adaptive, so she keeps up, taking every move the airbender throws at her and going through with the motion, laughing.

Still, she doesn't think she'll ever move with the sort of effortless grace Aang manages without even trying.

Not that it matters. Aang is happy. So she's happy.

They dance.

Minutes pass, slipping through her fingers faster than she’s used to. It had been an adjustment, after the war, getting used to the lack of weight on her shoulders. Growing into herself and figuring out those gentle, reckless things that fill her with joy.

Suki is not used to being gentle. To being reckless. The consequences were always too steep.

But she’s learning now. They all are. Laughter bursts out of Aang and reverberates in her sternum, and it has to count for something, this. It has too.

She sends him twirling again.

Suki can train for hours and hours and never run out of breath, but now she’s panting and flushed from exertion, from this happiness that is just bubbling up in her soul, spilling up and out and over.

Maybe that’s what laughter is: joy that can’t be contained in your chest, joy so big and bright it just has to be heard.

Maybe that's just being alive.

Eventually, eventually, her breath is coming in short and harsh. The warrior in her insists on keeping on, pushing her body to the limit, forever focused on training and building endurance.

The young woman she’s growing into breathes heavily through her nose and places a hand on Aang’s shoulder, calls out over the music and hopes he can hear.

“I’m going to get something to drink!”

The airbender nods and waves her off. She watches out of the corner of her eye as another young boy approaches her charge, blushing and stammering up a storm, hearts in his eyes, asking if Aang wants to dance.

Aang, completely and utterly oblivious, grins and enthusiastically agrees. The other kid looks like he’s about to faint, but manages to get out some sort of answer to whatever Aang’s questions are, a grin building as he does.

The music starts up again, and the pair of them are dancing away, swept up in the crowds.

Suki gets her drink. She keeps an eye on the orange blob ducking and weaving its way through the dance floor, switching dance styles as easy as breathing. Not for the first time, she wonders what Aang’s childhood before the war was like.

Zuko slides up to her side and offers a wry smile, quirking up at his lips. Suki tilts her cup of juice higher and smirks when he rolls his eyes. Somewhere, Toph is no doubt staging a dramatic scene in order to allow the Fire Lord to discreetly slip away.

Somewhere, Aang’s voice is filtering over the music, loud and excited. She catches a glimpse of him directing a small army of children in a group dance of some sorts. They’re fumbling with the steps, stilted and disjointed and unfamiliar, but are quickly catching the drift.

Zuko watches, too. Mutters, quietly, “He’s crazy.”

Suki nods.

“Utterly insane.”

Both of them sound far too fond.

It’s a party. The music winds down. More food is brought out. The lanterns are lit and cast the whole event in a warm amber glow. Aang is humming besides her as they walk around the courtyard, only interrupting himself when he makes a point of holding conversations with whatever nonofficial-looking person he meets.

A lot of ambassador’s kids. A lot of tentative visiting merchants and business folk. A lot of locals from the fire nation, children and elderly and the everyday worker. Suki guides him away from anyone that looks full of malice, knowing it would ruin his night, but otherwise let's him go to town with it.

There’s a lot of gobsmacked reactions. A lot of wide eyes and stuttering responses, slowly melting into smiles and conversation as Aang inevitably charms people over. 

Suki has no right to feel as proud as she does. But she can’t help it. It makes her feel very smug to watch Aang fold himself into the lives of strangers like it’s nothing, to make himself human and available and real to everyone he meets.

It’s why she thinks nothing about letting Aang approach a young man tending to what appeared to be his grandfather, a truly old looking man, seated in a wheelchair. Liver spots mark his bald head and his hands are gnarled and stiff. The man’s watery brown eyes seemed distant and far away, not quite all there.

Aang starts talking with them, and Suki is standing some feet away. The man says his grandfather is a hundred and thirty four years old, proud and absentminded, and Aang cracks a joke about being a hundred and thirteen. She lets their conversation bleed into the background, head tilted back and enjoying the peaking stars, breathing in the smell of incense and good food.

She doesn’t see the old man’s gaze focus, suddenly all too sharp, on Aang, on the yellow and orange colouring his robes.

She doesn’t hear what the old man says.

She doesn’t see the way Aang pales, all the colour draining from his face. 

She doesn’t see the way Aang backs away, slow and then faster and then gone.

All she knows is that one minute she’s staring up at the sky and the next Aang’s hand is fisting at her arm, grip far too tight.

He’s staring up at her, looking ill, looking feint, looking like he’s about to throw up.

“Suki,” he says, and his voice is hardly there at all, barely even a breath of sound, all strained control, “Suki, I need to get out of here. Right now.”

There are a thousand thoughts running around in her head, crashing over themselves. All her senses have gone on hyper alert, looking for whatever danger has Aang so on edge after a night full of laughter, her eyes falling on the couple he’d been talking to but a moment ago.

The younger of the two looks apologetic and worried. The older man’s glare is entirely focused on the airbender at her side. Her own gaze narrows, and she steps forward, fingers curling towards her weapons-

But Aang is firmly planted, his grip on her arm like steel. 

_ “Suki-” _

His voice breaks twice over, stumbling over both syllables of her name. 

_ Focus,  _ she thinks,  _ focus, Aang needs you. _

Still, she hesitates, staring at that man. It takes a lot to upset Aang this drastically. She is not one to take the harming of her friends lightly.

But even as she watches, that piercing gaze drifts and clouds over, all that concentrated focus becoming nothing in a matter of moments, there and gone, gone, gone.

There's a hand reaching for her own, a flash of blue in the corner of her eye.

She turns away and huddles the airbender under her arm, starts leading him away from the courtyard and back into the palace, hugging the shadows and keeping out of sight. The crowds chatter and mingle, oblivious. Under her steady frame, Aang shakes.

After the fire nation prison, after her escape, after the adrenaline thrumming in her veins had faded away and left her exhausted and shaky and a little bit teary, Suki had gone up to Appa, had apologized for scaring him, had whispered into his ear how glad she was he had gotten away, how glad she was he found Aang again.

She had been avoiding sleep. She had been looking for something, anything to do. She had meant every world.

Suki hadn’t expected for the child in question to pop up from the other side of Appa’s head and stare at her with wide, guilty, so very incredibly  _ thankful  _ eyes. Hadn’t expected to spend the next hour flailing over Aang as he cried and thanked her in whispers over and over and cried again, having no idea how to comfort in the face of all those unbridled emotions. When Sokka finally woke up, stumbled across the crumbling ruins, and took over, all she had felt was relief.

Now, she’s a little older. She knows Aang a little better and understands the way he grieves and rages and panics just a little more, and she feels that same sense of relief when the sounds of the party fade away and they’re inside once more.

It means she can focus her attention on Aang, who is staring straight ahead and looks approximately three seconds from throwing up. He’s stopped shaking, for the most part, but his jaw is clenched to what seems to be an almost painful degree, fingers gripping into his forearms, curling his shoulders and making his frame smaller than it really is. His breathing is forcefully calm.

An alcove comes up, small and sheltered and out of the way. Suki guides Aang to the side and tucks them out of sight from the rest of the world, backs pressed against the wall, surrounded by silence.

Her muscles keep tensing up and twitching, bracing themselves for a battle that doesn’t seem to be coming, for a fight that isn’t there. She’d been doing  _ so good  _ earlier, had been letting herself relax and have fun, and now-

And now it’s like all her progress has been washed down the river. Her fingers keep making aborted movements towards her weapons. The illusion of safety has shattered.

Besides her, Aang’s breathing hitches. Suki could slap herself in the head.

_ Focus,  _ she thinks,  _ focus, this isn’t about you. _

“Aang,” her voice is hardly above a whisper, and her friend keeps staring straight ahead. She places a hand on his shoulder, says his name again, louder this time, “Aang, are you okay? Are you hurt?”

He blinks at her, his hands dig into the fabric on his knees. There’s a sharp shake of his head, and then a nod, and then a shake again. Face crumpling, breath hitching, Aang buries his face in his arms and starts regulating breathing again.

Placing a hand on his back, she leans closer.

“Do you want me to talk or be quiet?”

Silence for a second, two.

“Talk.” Aang says the word like it hurts. Like it was a scream that died somewhere in the back of his throat.

Suki talks. 

She talks about Kyoshi Island, about how her favourite trees turn white in the spring, laden with pale flowers. She talks about the Kyoshi Warriors, how proud she is of them, how they camped out in the wilderness and travelled the world and ate new foods and tried to do what was just. She talks about her mother, the faint memories she has of her from her early childhood. She talks about town festivals, shared tables full of food and laughter and something good.

All the while, the boy besides her keeps breathing, in that shaky, terrible, controlled way he gets when all the air wants to leave him entirely. He’s trembling again, just slightly, and she wonders if he’s crying. He’s always been one for silent tears.

Suki keeps talking.

She talks about Sokka, about how they went on a date last week and how he picked her flowers, not knowing they were from somebody’s garden until a man came tearing out of his house and started yelling. She talks about Katara, who found her the other night and gave her a stack of sweets with a wink, a smirk, and a finger to her lips. They ate every last piece of candy in one sitting and discussed anything and everything except the war.

Zuko made her terrible tea just yesterday, and she had sipped at it just to see him smile, to see the way his eyes crinkle golden and shining. She talks about how, next time, she plans on intervening before Zuko can ruin perfectly good leaves. Toph has agreed to be the distraction, as long Suki gives her all if her desert for the following three nights, a fair deal by any circumstance: it was truly, truly terrible tea.

Suki talks until she’s out of words and Aang breathes them in until he’s full of it, the stories and the laughter and the press of simpler, gentler moments. 

She clears her throat. She’s not sure how long they’ve been sitting here. Long enough that her mouth is dry. Long enough that her butt is numb.

“What happened?”

Gently, gently. Suki has seen this boy become something more than his small frame, become a legend walking the earth. She’s seen the glow and known it as power incarnate.

It doesn’t stop him from looking fragile, right here, right now; Aang looks like a good wind would scatter him into pieces. The silence stretches long, and then longer. Suki sits and sums up every ounce of patience that she has, lets it rest heavy inside her chest.

“He said,” and Aang’s voice is  _ tiny,  _ almost swallowed up in the space between his arms. He hasn’t looked up. “He said, the old man, he said-”

The words break and crumble into nothing. Suki keeps quiet and has the bitter inclination that she knows exactly where this is going.

“He didn’t understand why I was there. He thought he had got, gotten rid of ‘my type’ already-”

Suki doesn’t know what to say. She doesn’t know what you  _ can  _ say, in the face of a revelation like that. Aang’s knuckles are white from how hard he’s digging his nails into his knees. His breath is going but the words keep coming, and coming, and coming, like he can’t make them stop now that’s he’s started and-

And Suki wants to end that man, in cold blood, in a way she thought she left behind in the war. It’s a distracted kind of hatred, but it’s definitely there.

“He was there,” Aang is mumbling, hardly decipherable, “he was there and he was murdering them, he was killing my friends and the bison and the lemur and he was killing the babies and the elders and the gardens and he was killing my people-”

Too many words and not enough air, and they just keep coming.

“Aang,  _ Aang _ you have to breathe.”

“and he wanted to kill me, he wanted to kill me he was looking at me like he wanted to kill me, he wanted to kill me, he didn’t even know that I was the Avatar he just wanted to  _ kill me-” _

She’s holding him too tight: he’s going to bruise. She’s still learning to be gentle and none of this is fair.

“Aang,” she says, because unfair is the modus operandi, not the occasional exception, “deep breath,  _ now.” _

It’s her commander’s voice, her leader's voice, and sometimes it’s easy to forget that Aang is a child soldier but not right now, not when he immediately responds, taking in a sharp inhale that he chokes on.

He’s lifted his head. He’s lifted his head and he’s looking at her and he’s definitely been crying. She wipes his tears with the pad of her thumb and looks him right in the eye.

“Again.”

And Aang does. Again. And again. Twice, thrice, a dozen times more. 

Eventually, his chest is moving in less of a staccato, and Suki is satisfied, and she pulls him into a hug.

It’s uncomfortable. They’ve been sitting on hard tile too long and they’re not at the right angle, twisted awkwardly to make the reach. He’s getting her neck wet, the top of her uniform getting covered in mucus and salt water and sweat, his shaky, steady breathing tickling her skin.

What do you say, in the face of this? Suki holds him and feels powerless and hates it. The war was over. This was supposed to be happily ever after. They were supposed to have  _ won. _

Suki glares at red painted pillars and doesn’t even see them, wishing she could offer to kill that bastard and not doing it, refusing to put Aang in a position where he has to say  _ no _ and protect a man who was part of so much destruction.

They sit in silence for a long, long time.

It doesn’t feel like victory.

Sokka is the first. This makes sense, because he gets paranoid easily, and the paranoia triples when people go missing for hours on end with no explanation. 

Or with explanation. Really, there’s a lot of anxiety over people being out of view from his watchful gaze. Suki isn’t the only one having trouble letting go of the war.

So Sokka is the first and it’s no surprise, and he walks down the hallway with his fingers thumbing the hilt of his sword, eyes narrowed and suspicious until they spot the pair of them huddling in the alcove and they soften in concern.

His steps are steady when he comes over, and his voice is soft as he nudges Aang closer to Suki.

“Hey, Aang, move your bony butt over: I need room for my handsome one.”

It’s not really funny. Aang attempts a smile nonetheless, and the effort is appreciated even as it comes across more of a grimace.

As soon as Sokka’s fully seated, Aang shifts and leans against his shoulder, eyes closed. The airbender’s starting to take meditative breaths again. Over his bald head, her boyfriend exchanges looks with Suki, eyebrows furrowed and mouthing,  _ 'Is he okay?' _

Suki shrugs. Sokka nods. 

They sit. They wait.

Katara is next. She walks right past them with something steely in her eye, and Suki calls out her name, calls her back.

The young waterbender’s face crumples when she sees Aang. By her side, Suki feels the boy in question move, a small gesture of some sorts, and Katara’s expression bleeds over with determination, crossing the space in moments and squeezing besides Sokka, reaching over him to grab Aang’s hand.

By the looks of it, they’re both holding on to each other too tight. By the looks of it, neither one of them care. 

It’s cramped, the space small, but there’s something peaceful about it, being pushed together in a pile of bodies and warmth, their breathing reverberating against the walls.

Toph pops up soon after, looking unimpressed.

“Why the fuck did no one tell me we were having a cuddle pile?”

Katara answers before Suki has the chance. A year ago, she would have sounded exasperated. Now, she still sounds exasperated, but she also sounds fond.

“It wasn’t exactly planned, Toph.”

This is, apparently, enough to drop the subject. Or maybe it’s just that in the span of a few moments the girl’s gotten a better reading of the mood. Either way, she shrugs and starts pulling off some of her body armour, dropping it in an unorganized pile on the ground.

“That party was getting boring anyways,” she says, like that seals the deal, and maybe it does. The next thing Suki knows the earthbender is cramming her way between her side and the wall, half sitting on top of her and not seeming to care.

“Cozy little spot you picked here, Twinkle Toes.”

Aang just shrugs, reaches out his other hand across Suki’s knees. Toph seems to consider it for a moment and then takes it, giving a tight squeeze and knocking the back of her head against the wall. Sighing, she falls silent. 

Suki sort of wants to laugh: she’s sure the sight of them is ridiculous. Or maybe they look really pathetic. She’s finding it hard to care, either way. 

Counting the seconds as they tick by is never the most entertaining way to pass the time, but it feels wrong to break the silence. Not now, not yet, not until-

Zuko comes round the corner and stares at them for one second, two. His face twists into about thirteen different expressions before settling on peak awkwardness and hesitancy. Suki wonders how she could have ever hated him so thoroughly.

(She knows why. She  _ knows.  _ Perhaps she’s really wondering at how much the two of them have grown, grown up and grown closer and grown kinder, still.)

“Can I-” he asks, falters, “I mean, would you want me to, do you mind if I-”

Aang’s opened his eyes.

“Get over here, Zuko.”

His voice is still very soft, but it’s good to hear him speak. Zuko comes closer slowly, sits cross legged in front of the airbender slowly, the sprawl of his robes vibrant against the floor, the sliding of his shins pressing against Aang’s toes.

She loses track of time again, sitting there in that too-small alcove, just being together and existing. She finds that she doesn’t mind, the passing seconds, the small touches.  _ You are here, you are here, you are here,  _ the press of living bodies says,  _ and we are here with you.  _

And eventually, they start shifting, repositioning. Sokka starts humming absentmindedly, a song that Suki doesn’t know. She wonders if he learned it growing up, or when he was travelling around the world. When Toph catches on and starts actually singing the words, she wonders if Sokka taught it to her, passing time high above the rest of the world.

The pair of them break into a jaunty chorus, occasionally fumbling for words or arguing about the tune. Toph exclaims that she’s  _ blind,  _ not tone deaf, and Sokka sputters and points and Katara laughs in his face.

Zuko starts talking about visiting his Uncle, absentminded chatter to fill in the space after the reverberating singing. Katara comments about some errands in the South Pole, about wanting to see Gran Gran again, her dad. Toph doesn’t talk about her parents and Suki doesn’t talk about her own, and Sokka cuts into the chatter to start describing his new ideas for an invention.

There’s a resonance to this, a rhythm to it. The ebbs and flows of conversation and the way they press together, units of a whole, one of many. It feels good to be wanted like this. It feels right. 

Suki will always hold a special place in her heart for the Kyoshi Warriors, those fine young women who followed her into battle and then into prison. Who gave their loyalty and their bravery and even their lives. But it was also different, because she was their commander first and their friend second, because she was young and she was scared and it was war and she was desperate to keep them as safe as she could, because she knew it would be her knocking on the doors of their families if she failed.

With the people besides her it’s different. It’s different because the world was fucked and every last one of them had already signed their lives on the dotted line in order to save it. Because they were children and they were soldiers and only the second really mattered. 

Because when they went to battle she didn’t have to look at a dozen faces looking right back at her, waiting for her call, depending on her to get them through the fight. Instead, every last member of this rag tag group were all looking at each other, young and scarred and on even ground.

On even ground, on even ground: Suki sits in an alcove and tries to find steadiness in the way she breathes, in the way these ridiculous, brave, loving children crowd around her and breathe and breathe and breathe in tandem.

This counts for something. It has to.  _ It has to.  _

Aang is sitting besides her, small and frail and starting to contribute to the conversation, cracking jokes and learning to smile all over again. Later, there will be explanations and traded glances and clenched fists. Later, there will be rage and mourning and a thousand aching things. The world is not so kind as to let them off easy. The world is not kind.

There's an old man outside whose hands are red with the blood of a nation dead and gone, gone, gone. He doesn’t remember it, not really, cannot be made to carry any guilt.

There's still a damp spot on her uniform, clammy against her neck.

It’s possible Aang will learn to grieve loudly, some day. It’s possible he will spend the rest of his life crying like his people, made silent and voiceless. Either way, there will be tears.

Suki curls her arm around her friend and thinks,  _ Let them come. _

Tears are for the living. They’re alive.

Katara snarks at Zuko- who gives an indignant squawk- and Toph laughs so hard she chokes. By her side, Aang’s small frame shakes with quiet giggles and a wet snort escapes through his nose. Sokka meets her gaze over the airbender’s head and smiles like the moon, reflecting every ounce of quiet joy they’ve found themselves in.

A small hand takes her own, squeezes softly. Suki catches a splash of blue out of the corner of her eye and uses everything she’s learned to squeeze back just as gently.

She breathes.

Shared grins and shared laughter, dancing together in a crowd. A world at their feet and their whole lives ahead of them. Growing into themselves, growing upwards and outwards and out. Healing, in increments, in spits and spans and starts.

This, too, is for the living. 

They’re alive.


End file.
